National Library of Australia - Home page
NLA News - home January 2006 Volume XVI Number 4

Travelling Treasures: Hints for the Unwary

click to enlarge
Attributed to George Raper (1769-1797)
Australian Owlet-Nightjar [1789?]
watercolour; 32.2 x 40.3 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn3579475

Nat Williams reveals the complex process of creating the National Treasures from Australia’s Great Libraries exhibition

While people were forming long queues around the National Library in February 2002, waiting to see the Treasures from the World’s Great Libraries exhibition, the Council of Australian State Libraries (CASL)—having witnessed the success of this exhibition—resolved to explore the possibility of mounting an unprecedented exhibition of ‘treasures’ drawn from national, state and territory libraries, designed to tour to all capital cities.

This was to be a vehicle to promote the diverse distributed collections of Australian libraries, and to raise their public profile and the awareness of their collecting histories. It was resolved that the National Library would be overall project manager because of its exhibition management experience. Like many good ideas such creations may appear straightforward until the logistics and risks of such an enterprise are considered.

click to enlarge

Loui Seselja (b.1948)
Overnight queue for exhibition Treasures from the World’s Great Libraries, National Library of Australia, Canberra, January 2002
colour digital photograph
Pictures Collection
nla.int-nl39436-ls37

click to enlarge
Cover of the catalogue for National Treasures from Australia’s Great Libraries

When developing its first indemnified exhibition, the National Library found that negotiating the loans of significant items from their custodians was complex, time consuming and sometimes frustrating. Any anxieties on the part of lending institutions were largely overcome, however, through assurances from the Library that it had Commonwealth Government support at the highest level through Art Indemnity Australia (AIA). This scheme was established to carry the insurance risk for such exhibitions of cultural material under stringent guidelines.

How then to create a new blockbuster exhibition of precious, fragile, light sensitive Australian library ‘treasures’ to tour to eight venues over a period of almost two years? Considering also that two of the nine CASL libraries could not accommodate the proposed exhibition as they lacked indemnity standard facilities (Hobart and Darwin), another two were planning but had not yet built galleries (Brisbane and Perth), and Adelaide had a new gallery but it was administered by Flinders University, it was clear from the outset that this was going to be a challenge.

A further challenge was the need to present an exhibition which did not significantly change in form at each venue but could also protect and highlight the items on view. A volume such as Cook’s Endeavour Journal has 753 pages and an interesting page opening for each venue is comparatively easy to arrange. However, to display over the life of the exhibition tour natural history watercolours, which can be particularly light sensitive, has meant many hours of negotiations with conservators in all the CASL libraries.

A quick reference to the National Treasures from Australia’s Great Libraries catalogue checklist reveals the numerous page turnings and supplementary items programmed for the tour. What the list does not reveal are the multiple, specially designed perspex supports required for some items. If a page opening at the beginning of a volume is chosen for the National Library showing then it is probable that another support is required for a later venue with a different page opening, due to the changed shape of the spine of the item.

click to enlarge click to enlarge
Behind the scenes work on the Gallery, 25 November 2005
click to enlarge click to enlarge

Work conducted behind the scenes by conservators determines the display life of a collection item based on its medium, current condition, previous display history (if known) and any treatments it has had. This is a complicated exercise and, at one level, verges on philosophical notions about how many years the item’s display life can be amortised. If an item’s rate of deterioration is projected over 500 years then it will be seen on display in our libraries more frequently than if it is amortised over 2000 years. A number of the items included in National Treasures will not be seen again for many years and are unlikely ever to be together again, although the Library’s proposed Treasures Gallery development aims to reunite some of its key items after the exhibition tour.

click to enlarge

Louis Buderus
Portrait of Mary Watson c.1879
b&w copy print of a carte-devisite
photograph
State Library of Queensland
OM 81-1204/7

click to enlarge
Mary Watson’s diary
State Library of Queensland

Another challenge in developing National Treasures has been the need to design the exhibition environment for each venue to ensure consistency of presentation and the safety of all items. This has included designing and fabricating more than 50 special exhibition showcases and wallcases which will be shipped to each venue. One semitrailer full of exhibition display materials, including audiovisual content, will arrive at the venue days before the installation commences, and a team of specialised Library and local staff will create the exhibition environment before the couriered, security-guarded, climate-controlled, air-freighted and airride-trucked exhibition content arrives. This is a complicated process, especially when organised in compliance with the AIA best practice guidelines, in this instance administered by the National Gallery of Australia as one of two managing organisations for the scheme.

Designing an engaging and sympathetic environment for the items on display is also a crucial consideration. Some ‘treasures’ are at first glance visually insignificant scraps of paper with faded writing on them, but they can contain affecting personal histories. The viewer’s experience of these histories should be as personal and memorable as possible in every venue. To design the exhibition to fit eight venues, all of which are different sizes and shapes, is another real challenge of this particular project.

The world’s first treasures exhibition was staged in Manchester in 1857. It included 16 000 items (as described in Tim Bonyhady’s National Treasures catalogue essay) and mirrored the encyclopedic ideals of the Great Exhibition era. The first great Australian treasures exhibition was held in the State Library of Victoria in 1869 with 2640 items on view. The National Treasures exhibition has been more selective, showing 175 items from the nine CASL library collections. In every case, however, ‘treasures’ exhibitions have engaged the public who have visited in significant numbers. Partially at least, this can be attributed to the fact that these exhibitions are free—a rare commodity in Australia. It was recommended early on by the Exhibition Advisory Group (representing CASL collections staff) that National Treasures would limit itself to Australian material given that there was such a profusion of good stories and items to be included. In National Treasures, Australian libraries have created an exhibition that will tour more widely than any major cultural exhibition in Australian history, designed to attract the widest possible audience. The exhibition seeks to position Australia in the world, from the earliest interactions with Dutch exploration, up to the present. It celebrates Australia’s strength in adversity, its innovations, its creativity, its cultural diversity, its known and unknown histories and characters.

click to enlarge
James Barker Emery (c.1794–1889)
Sketches of Australian Fishes 1837–1841
watercolour on paper;
51.0 x 41.0 cm
Rare Book Collection
State Library of South Australia
click to enlarge
Norman Lindsay (1879–1969)
Cover illustration for The Magic Pudding c.1918
watercolour on paper;
47.0 x 40.0 cm
Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales
Bequeathed by Sir William Dixson, 1952
Copyright H.A. and C. Glad

From Terra Incognita to New Holland, then Terra Australis to Australia. From Terra Nullius to Native Title. From The Black Line to Bringing Them Home. The aim of the exhibition is to animate the history of Australia, appropriately acknowledging its Indigenous heritage, dealing with its key events, exploring painful but illustrative moments and revealing aspects of this nation’s heritage to the people who created it. As with the previous Treasures exhibition, every visitor will have their favourite selection of items—something which they can take away from the exhibition and ‘treasure’ which may change their lives in a real and immediate way—and they will have come face to face with our history.

NAT WILLIAMS is Director of Exhibitions at the National Library of Australia. National Treasures from Australia’s Great Libraries will be on display at the Library from 3 December 2005 to 12 February 2006. Visit the website for tour details: http://nationaltreasures.nla.gov.au

Back to NLA News Index Back to January Issue Back to NLA Home Page
NLA News - home

To order a particular issue of the NLA News e-mail nlasales@nla.gov.au
or join the Friends of the National Library of Australia and receive a copy each month by mail.